Foist
by Valieara
Summary: Foist: to force another to accept, especially by stealth or deceit. This isn't what she wanted. Odd and dark.


**Disclaimer:** I do not own characters, ideas, settings, themes, or styles of the musical or book _Wicked (The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West)._ If you want to know who's property they actually are, you'd do better to look them up yourself; for to mention them here would mean the disclaimer would be longer than the actual fic.

**Spoilers/'Verse:** Up to "Thank Goodness", at least, it's Musicalverse. Still attached to it.

**Notes:** The parts of Rue McLanahan's performance I enjoyed the most is undoubtedly the parts where she was the scariest: namely, "March of the Witch Hunters" and (perhaps a little surprisingly) "Thank Goodness". You could _see _her getting angry in the shadows behind Glinda, feel that scary vibe coming off her - and there's no way you can convince me there weren't some aftershocks. Thus, something a little (very) strange and dark that I was (again) writing whilst putting off a Lit paper.

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* * *

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_- What is it?_

_- I got what I wanted._

_Fiyero and Galinda, in "Dancing Through Life"

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The day isn't going the way it's supposed to be.

She'd gotten her way.

It's funny how all she's really been able to think about for the last few years is how it isn't supposed to be like this. None of it is. Speeches are all very well and good, as the Ozian populace doesn't seem to require eloquence, just what they want to hear. That, she can do; that, she has to do. She's always done it, until today.

It's funny how the smallest things can send one into an emotional breakdown, however temporary. An abandoned space at her side; the realization that none of them want this. Funny how the smallest things can push one off their high ledge. Funniest of all how she's never realized how dangerous it is.

Glinda stands on a ledge that may as well be a precipice even for the railing in front of her. The people, her adoring admirers, become rocks upon she would shatter. Morrible simmering in the shadows behind her becomes the unseen force that would push her over: unseen, and therefore guiltless – at least, as far as appearances go. Appearances are all that matter, Glinda knows. Her breathing quickens, sensing the change behind her, but she does not glance backward, afraid it might actually push her over. She must keep up appearances.

She is adored for telling lies; her life is threatened because she knows the truth.

The spot beside her must be conspicuously empty to the crowd below, so she moves to try to take up the space with her presence. There is another place that has always been empty in her eyes, and she is careful to avert her eyes from this place, as well. Rocks below, a hard place on either side. Glinda feels she is being pushed together, relentlessly and unmercifully, until she gives in to one or the other. What would happen then, she wonders? Shattered? Broken? Or quite literally killed.

She hadn't thought a trip to the Emerald City would cost so much at the time; it had been meant to be a care free day, free from obligation. Instead she had been roped and tangled in a war of obligation, of appearance and reality. Appearances claim she is revered among the royal court, claim she has access to and power in the government; reality claims that she's been under house arrest (or city-arrest?) for the past five years.

She continues on, if only to spite those that might crush her. Maybe it's a way of proving something, to those who are absent from her side, to those who would accuse her? Maybe a belated way of showing support? Maybe a meltdown, from the inside out, from someone who refuses to be taken down by anyone else. Her head is spinning far too quickly, her heart beating too loudly, her words coming too rushed, stumbling over each other, for her to be able to be a fair judge.

Ah, but taken down from where? How high is this supposed, imaginary place? And how real are the consequences? Glinda stops, suddenly, to appease those ever looming rocks, the boiling force that drives her unwittingly forward. It's real enough – real enough to have sold out to, real enough to be trapped in, real enough to hate loving, real enough to hate.

The crowd below disperses and disappears, as though into mist; one second there, one second gone. Glinda doesn't know how long she has been standing here. She turns, and is confronted by Morrible's face: hard, chiseled from stone. She freezes, and they stand staring at each other: predator and prey, each waiting for the other to make the move.

Glinda makes it. She turns on her heel and runs, not caring about where she runs, down a rotted alleyway, her skirts coated with silt and grime, rodents running about her twisted feet. She cares only about what she can sense: the adrenaline in her veins, her heart pumping, mind spinning the way it always is now. It is in one's most basic instincts to fight for oneself, to flee from a fight.

Glinda runs.

This is what this has become – it is not war, it is not politics. It is primal and instinctual – one superior, one inferior. One powerful, the other powerless. Predator and prey. She'd made it into the older, still wallpapered hallways of the Emerald Palace before nails scrape her scalp and twist her hair out of her elegant upsweep; her carefully positioned hat and sparkled veil fall to the floor, unnoticed until she is forced to bend backward with a cry, looking upward at a twisted heavily powdered face through no defense. The force, the power.

"So, my little missy," it hisses. "Feel better now that you've got that out?"

"Yes," Glinda gasps breathlessly, eyes unfocused.

The hand releases her hair and thrusts her hard away. The momentum sends her crashing sideways into the wall opposite. She slides down the gaudy flowers slowly. "What in Oz's name were you _thinking_?" it screams in its guttural, serrated voice, and Glinda shudders, hair hanging in limp, reluctant curls halfway around her face. "Bridges you cross, indeed. Well, you've burned them yourself too, so you'd best let that go this very moment."

Glinda's eyes close.

"Oh, I've upset the poor dearie." It clucks her tongue, forcefully taking Glinda's face in hands to turn her heartbroken face up in asteel grip. Her blue eyes look resolutely away. "There, there now, Galinda," it soothes, hiding the bladed edge beneath its voice. "Don't cry. Everyone loves you."

What doesn't this woman know? She twists away fiercely from the mockery of a green girl with gentle heart and gentle hands.

The woman cackles and leaves.

_It doesn't matter what your name is - everyone loves you!_

Galinda sinks back down in a heap of skirts and cloth and shoes twisted about her limbs to sob violently, well aware of the empty spots all around her - most acutely aware of two. She stops thinking, as it's become too hard, too painful. It's all anything but funny.

Her life isn't going the way it's supposed to be.

She'd gotten her way.


End file.
